It is perhaps a debate worthy of discussion: How DO anarchists propose we protect the rights of children in an anarchist society? The draconian laws we have at the moment clearly fail in their task - by driving things like kiddie porn underground, they are probably making it worse rather than better (in the same way that draconian anti-drug laws made the drug problem much worse). But what is the alternative?

To answer this question, we must remember that in a libertarian society, we would be returning to a truly free-market society—with the emphasis on markets. This would mean that people would be paying the full cost for all of their individual decisions, and companies—which require a profit—would be doing likewise.

It may help to compare this scenario with the “market for war.” In a market-based society, nobody would be engaging in aggressive wars because there is no profit in it—unlike our current socialist society where the costs of war-making are redistributed through taxes and the “profits” are derived from bilking the public and siphoning their tax money into the pockets of the crony-capitalist companies. There would be no “chicken-hawk” constituency of voters who could have their bloodlust sated by forcing their hapless neighbors to pay taxes to support the spectacle of mass murder. Likewise, there would be no companies stepping up to make profits off of death because there wouldn’t be any profits with nobody willing to invest in such ventures, which would be unable to pass the smell test and simultaneously be unable to pay for themselves.

Now move to victimless crimes—which brings us closer to the situation here. There would be no “war on drugs” in a market society. What private individuals would want to pay the sky-high insurance company premium necessary to hire the “security guards” necessary to arrest a marijuana-smoking neighbor, pay the full incarceration cost of putting that neighbor in a cage, pay the full costs of hiring lawyers, court reporters, and of judges/arbitrators and prosecutors to actually identify a “harm” that would require payment of a penalty high enough to justify all of this drug-war activity? My guess is zero. People have better things to do with their money than to pay for all of these costs and pay for the risk-liability of cost of a counter-suit for false arrest. In a market society, harm would have to be proven. So you can see that there would be no prosecutions for drug-use. There’s simply no money in it. It would be a money pit. People would mind t heir own business. In our current society, the socialistic drug war—which redistributes the costs and benefits of drug taking to innocent bystanders—oodles of money and resources are wasted because nobody pays for their choices in prosecuting people for harms that exist only in their own minds. That’s why the armchair “drug-warriors” get away with it. They are not spending their own money as citizens or investing their own money—which can add up to huge losses—as companies that sell security, incarceration, and judicial services.

Now to the 17-year-old boy who is distributing electronic photos of his penis. What kind of parent would be willing to spend oodles of hard-earned money to purchase an insurance policy that would cover the high costs of investigating the electronic transmission of a penis photo? Of paying the secretaries to draw up the paperwork to prosecute such a crime? Of paying the costs for a team of police officers to safely arrest the boy without harming anyone else? Of incarcerating the boy until he goes to trial? Of paying the full costs of a lawyer to litigate against the boy or the boy’s parents for raising a child who makes such a silly decision? Of paying the full costs of hiring an arbitrator to judge the case? Of paying a repossession company to acquire any resources that may be seized in order to pay for damages? And that gets us to the bottom of this issue. What is the market-based cost—or “damage”—that can be assigned for mailing a penis picture? What is the cost of the “harm”? How would it be assessed? Can the “harm” be defined in a way that does not make us laugh or cry for stupidity? In other words, if I were the parent of the girl who was the target of this sex-ting, I would be questioning my own child-rearing skills. I would have a talk with my daughter to ask her why she was dating boys that were two years older than her. I may even visit the parents of the boy who sent the photo to ask them if they were aware of what their son were doing. All of these normal parental behaviors cost nothing. They are also sane and adult behaviors related to the reasonable upbringing of children. Childhood is about making good decisions and learning to make them—in other words, acquiring the skills needed to be a self-sustaining adult. In other words, childhood and childhood mistakes would not be criminalized as they are now. Insurance companies would not be stepping into this kind of situation hoping to make a profit out of them because there probably would be little or no profit to be made. After all, a true “harm” would have to be proven, a cost assigned, and all of the “acquisition costs” measured and taken into account. How many policies covering the litigation and incarceration required would be sold to a sane and thrifty parent? And since these costs could not be redistributed to non-parents, I suspect very few such policies would be purchased. In a market society, parents would actually be raising their own children—not sending them off to a school funded through taxes stolen from neighbors and into streets funded by other coercive means. They would actually know their children and be actively involved in their upbringing. They would be thrifty people who visit a neighbor whose boy does embarrassing things with camera photos. They would not be escalating the problems of adolescence into legal matters. Would they? They would have to prove harm? And what are the “harms” of childhood decision-making mistakes? And what are the costs?

So the answer to this question is this: in a libertarian market society, there probably would be no profit in litigating penis pictures. Would there be? It would not be a society in which “that which is not prohibited is mandatory.” It would be a society where people would pay the true costs of their behavior—including the real costs of social ostracism. Boys who become narcissistic exhibitionists would be seen for what they are—people in need of counseling. A 15-year-old girl is probably at the same level of emotional maturity as a 17-year-old boy, but in a market society, this kind of “playing doctor” behavior would probably have taken place at the age of eight instead of being postponed—by the action of helicopter parenting—to the age of 15 or 17. Children would not become the infantilized adults that they are in our society—one in which people never really grow up to be responsible but are forever wards of the paternalistic/maternalistic nanny state. Children would be acquiring behavioral skills earlier in life—just as they would become literate earlier in life without government schools. I doubt if these “playing doctor” issues would be occurring in the same way as they do now. They would be occurring at the age of seven or eight, and people would be responding to them as childhood foibles—without police involvement. Growing up behaviors and mistakes would not be criminalized, would they? And people who were still exhibiting these behaviors at age 17 would be already be in counseling or would have grown out of this stage. There would be no legal remedies for vices without victims. Being offended by the sight of human flesh would not be considered a crime. It would be laughed out of court and seen as a developmental problem. And even then, would a developmentally retarded boy be a criminal or just a nuisance? Parents would not be able to pay for the police to bring up their children for them because a private policing company would not step into such a situation without good reason to think there was money to be made. And would there be? I doubt it.

To help inform one's thinking about these and similar issues, I cannot recommend too highly the wonderful book written by Morris and Linda Tannehill: Market for Liberty. It is one of my favorites. Here's a link: http://mises.org/document/6058/The-Market-for-Liberty

How DO anarchists propose we protect the rights of children in an anarchist society?

The first thing I would want to explore is the "we" of the question. Because where principles of self ownership are practiced parents are responsible for children until the children can safely fly their own kites. So who is the "we" of "..an anarchist society..."? Anarchism moves collectivism to the sidelines.

I say this a lot, but bears repeating: human infants are unique among living newborns in that they require total adult care and supervision. This goes on until ultimately those same children provide the care and supervision for the elderly parents. This, in fact, is the picture of anarchy. The family unit is the primary and only legitimate governing agency.

The problem is that none of us have experienced freedom. We have been incubated and inculcated in collectivism for so long that it is difficult to think in terms of "I" instead of "we".

Lawrence's arguments about this particular case are sound, though my question was a more general one. In this particular case, there was clearly no victim, and thus there cannot have been a crime. I was wondering about child porn in a general sort of way: in at least some cases, there clearly are victims. But I find myself thinking along the same lines as you: sad as it may be, they are not my children and I cannot be made to take responsibility for them, even if that responsibility only amounts to me paying taxes for law enforcement.

I would add another thing here: perhaps one of the errors that the collectivists make is to think that there necessarily are solutions to any and all social ills in the first place (and that the best way to deal with them is via governments making and enforcing laws). It seems to me that with many of these problems, they have always been with us and always will be no matter what we or governments do. And as I pointed out in my previous post, government involvement almost invariably makes things worse.

From what I read, porn consumption is typically higher in countries where it is banned or severely restricted. When it is legalized in such countries, there is an initial spike in consumption, but people soon get over the excitement and then life goes on. Apparently, mild forms of child porn was fairly freely available in many western countries until the 1970s. Since then, there has been something of a witch hunt going on, and predictably, not only did it not do much to protect the interests of children, but in fact made things worse: instead of mild erotica of the sort that Ancient Greeks painted on their vases (and that typified porn prior to the ban), the stuff that now floats around on the web is apparently genuinely sick.

So we managed to move, in a single generation, from stuff that should perhaps be frowned upon, all the way to bestiality, snuff films and who knows what else.

As an octogenarian father, grandpa and great-grandpa I like to think that I would go to any length to intervene personally (when it is in my power to do so) to protect any child -- be it your child, my grandchild [all my kids are grown -- some getting older than I :-) ] or a complete stranger. One of the "social ills" is that there are different levels of parenting: some good, some not-so-good, some atrocious (subject to judgement -- what's "good" to you might seem "bad" to me, etc etc).

Sex is a sacred cow. Who understands it??? I sure don't. But few will disagree that it's best that teenagers not drastically alter their lives with unwanted pregnancies, STD's, etc. So we "parent": we try to provide good reasons why prepubescent teens should refrain from behaviors that might result in those kinds of calamity.

"Banning" almost anything usually creates a greater demand for whatever it is that is prohibited. Parents learn that lesson early in the game. The power elite have the tactic down to an "inverse science": example -- the "drug war".

And sex.

How better to wrest control from free market thinking than to "ban" porn, prostitution, etc etc etc. The abortion issue is another example of a divide-and-conquer tactic utilizing that sacred cow called sex as a fulcrum.

It is a sociological fact that places where prostitution has always been legal and an honored business have more secure marriages -- fewer divorces, sex scandals, etc. The bible-belt prohibition of women's exposed breasts has given rise to meteoric hangups, I suspect -- and has no doubt caused the denial of many infants' enjoying the nutritional benefits of mothers' milk, and has prevented a special bonding the nursed child has with Mom.

Kent responded to a comment on his blog a couple days ago with links to a couple videos where all traffic controls had been removed from busy intersections. Traffic immediately began to flow faster and more smoothly, and a 2 year study indicated higher traffic volume and almost total elimination of traffic accidents. It was an apt analogy to the principle of freedom.